This invention relates to a supporting pad for a hatch cover of a ship, having a pair of bearing blocks provided with cooperating bearing surfaces and arranged respectively at the rim of a hatch of the ship and at the rim of the hatch cover, a relative movement being performable between the hatch and the hatch cover in a glide plane defined by the bearing surfaces.
Supporting pads of this type have already become known in the art. With the known supporting pads the hatch cover has a sufficient clearance in order to permit a simple opening and closing of the ship hatch. The hatch cover normally engages over the coaming arranged at the rim of the ship hatch. The problem of such supporting pads is that as a result of the relative movements occurring by a straining of the ship during rough sea a satisfactory support pattern of the supporting pads must be obtained. Furthermore, it is required during assembly to individually adjust the cooperating bearing surfaces and weld each bearing block in this adjusted position to the ship or to the hatch cover. It must be kept in mind that because of the prescribed clearance of only 0.5 mm between the upper bearing box and the lower bearing box this work is very costly. If this clearance is not obtained during assembly, the bearing blocks must be reprocessed by building-up welding and grinding or only by grinding.
Furthermore, it is known to form the bearing blocks as supporting pads of steel which are subject to heavy abrasion during use. The deficiency results that steel particles form and rusting occurs upon contact with sea water. As a result of the movements of the ship it does happen that inspite of sealing rust-containing sea water gets into the hatch.